Health Hotline Magazine | April 2022

UP THE “ANTI” ON YOUR HEALTH WITH QUERCETIN Nature’s super nutrient adds quality health support when and where it matters most By Liz Mueller

You could say that quercetin really ups the “anti” when it comes to supporting whole-body health. As in, anti-oxidant, anti-histamine, anti-inflammatory, anti-aging, and anti-viral, quintupling its health-promoting e ect on the body and working synergistically with other key nutrients, like zinc and vitamin C, to expand our health span. It’s no wonder quercetin is gaining popularity as a super nutrient. If you’re new to its free-radical scavenging, inflammation-balancing, immune-boosting, brain-protecting, cardiovascular- supporting actions, you’ll soon realize it’s hardly a gamble to add it to the mix.

A RESPIRATORY ROCKSTAR Quercetin is a must-have this time of year, or anytime allergies and hay fever come a-knocking. It exerts an anti-allergy e ect by inhibiting the release of pro-inflammatory compounds like histamine that cause allergy symptoms, including itching, sneezing, watery eyes, runny noses, and bronchoconstriction. But it does more than just quench a hay fever attack; it is also frequently used to treat a wide variety of allergic conditions, including asthma, eczema, and hives. Furthermore, quercetin is beneficial for the prevention and treatment of bronchitis. It relaxes airway smooth muscle, modulates inflammation, and supports healthy respiratory function in the respiratory tract, as well as the sinuses. Quercetin not only supports healthy respiratory function during a change in seasons, but it can also o set the harmful e ects of air pollution caused by carbon dioxide (CO2) and wildfire smoke, and even cigarette smoke. One study examining the e ects of quercetin and vitamin C on bronchial cells when exposed to fine particulate matter (PM2.5), an especially dangerous type of air pollution, found that the combination of quercetin and vitamin C “strikingly” reduced PM2.5’s negative health e ects to the cells, in part by reducing inflammation, oxidative damage, and mitochondrial damage. Similar results have also been found in studies investigating mice exposed to cigarette smoke, in which quercetin reduced airway inflammation, oxidative damage, and lung damage induced by second-hand cigarette smoke. The results lead the researchers of one study to write, “These findings suggest that quercetin has a potential for treating chronic airway diseases.”

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